Barricades Erected for N. Ireland March

Published 8:00 pm, Friday, July 4, 2003

British army engineers erected barricades of barbed wire and steel Saturday to keep Protestant Orangemen from marching through the main Catholic section of this bitterly divided town.

The security buildup to Sunday's disputed march by the Orange Order brotherhood has become a familiar annual event in Northern Ireland, where previous confrontations outside a rural Anglican church have inspired widespread violence.

But military and police commanders _ who since 1998 have refused to let approximately 2,000 Orangemen march from the church past the Catholic homes of the town's Garvaghy Road _ said they expected this year's standoff with Protestant hard-liners to fizzle out.

"I am quietly optimistic that with the officers we've got here and the army supporting us, we should have a peaceful day," said Chief Constable Hugh Orde, commander of Northern Ireland's predominantly Protestant police force.

The hard-earned lessons of previous clashes with Orangemen were on display Saturday as army engineers erected a range of obstacles.

Backhoes dug trenches, soldiers laid out coils of barbed wire and a crane installed a steel wall across the Orangemen's intended path on a narrow stone bridge. Armored cars filled with dozing riot police lined the rural laneways. A huge water cannon was on standby. A hovering army helicopter monitored the roads.

The army said the barrier would be stronger than the one erected last year that was knocked down by a few dozen Orangemen, leading police and soldiers to baton-charge the crowd in ugly scenes that left more than a dozen police and Protestant civilians injured.

Soldiers and police also erected substantial steel fencing Saturday around a Catholic church, which the Orangemen pass as they walk from downtown Portadown.

The Garvaghy Road dispute began in 1995 when the area's hard-line activists, led by a former Irish Republican Army convict, blocked the road in a direct challenge to the police and the Orange Order.

In 1995 the parade was allowed through a day late after the Catholic protesters agreed to mount a roadside protest.

Britain barred the Orangemen from the road in 1996 after the Protestants refused to negotiate directly with the Garvaghy Road protesters. Protestants rioted for four nights across Northern Ireland, forcing the police to reverse the decision _ and provoking three nights of more intense rioting in Catholic areas.

The violence and destruction were nearly as bad in 1997, when police mounted a surprise pre-dawn invasion of the Garvaghy Road to clear the way for the Orangemen's parade that afternoon.

But the Orangemen's stubborn stand has gradually lost its sectarian potency since 1998, when three young brothers died in an arson attack as part of the Protestant rioting and a British-appointed Parades Commission ordered the Protestants to negotiate directly or face an indefinite ban from the Garvaghy Road.

Portadown Orange leaders offered this year to begin talking with Garvaghy Road leaders _ but only if the parade was permitted first. Garvaghy Road leaders insisted talks must come first.

The Orange Order, founded in 1795 near Portadown, was instrumental in founding Northern Ireland as a British territory in 1921, shortly before the Catholic rest of Ireland won independence from Britain.